{"id":852,"date":"2007-08-16T09:18:47","date_gmt":"2007-08-16T17:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=852"},"modified":"2007-08-16T09:37:27","modified_gmt":"2007-08-16T17:37:27","slug":"grab-them-eyeballs-any-cred-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/?p=852","title":{"rendered":"Grab them eyeballs! Any cred at all!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Want to deeply understand how OpenID would make our lives better on social networks? Check out this piece<\/a> by Dare Obasanjo<\/a>, a program manager within Windows Live.  But be prepared to be jolted.  According to Dare, there is indeed a promised land, but we won't be allowed into it.<\/p>\n

Dare is responding to Wired's Slap in the Facebook:  It's Time for Social Networks to Open U<\/a>p.  He talks about the common-sense economics of identity, then asks why “there seem to be more OpenID providers than there are consumers”, concluding:<\/p>\n

\n

Why would Facebook<\/a> implement a feature that reduced their user growth via network effects? Why would MySpace<\/a> make it easy for sites to extract user profile information from their service? Because openness is great? Yeah\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6right.<\/p>\n

Openness isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t why Facebook is currently being valued at<\/a> $6 Billion…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Dare's explanation of how the big web properties see things is spot on.  But are they right? 
\n<\/p>\n

Here is Dare's state of the union:<\/p>\n

The major online services such as Yahoo! via BBAuth<\/a>, Microsoft via Passport<\/strike> Windows Live ID<\/a>, and AOL via OpenID<\/a> all provide ways for third party sites to accept user credentials from their sites. This increases the value of having an account on these services because it means now that I have a Microsoft Passport<\/strike> Windows Live ID<\/a> I not only can log-in to various Microsoft properties across MSN and Windows Live but also non-Microsoft sites like Expedia<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have to ask, “So what?”  Once I'm on Expedia, who clicks my eyeballs and reaps the eyeball tax?  Expedia, not Windows Live. <\/p>\n

This increases the likelihood that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get an account with the service which makes it more likely that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be a regular user of the service which means $$$. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is this logical?  It all escapes me.  Suppose I start to log in to Dare's blog using an AOL OpenID.  Does that make money for AOL?  No.  I don't have to give AOL two eyeball seconds.<\/p>\n

What would make $$$ for AOL?  To get my pretty eyeballs over there PDQ.  What's the best way to make that happen?  Make it easy!  Acquire new eyeballs! Acquire new eyeballs! Acquire new eyeballs! From anywhere and everywhere! <\/p>\n

The secret?  Auto-create<\/strong> an account on AOL no matter WHAT credential<\/strong> a user employs to get there.  You need this anyway to manage their profile.  Then get the user transparently to great experiences and start ringing up those eyeball seconds.  <\/p>\n

When I've talked about these ideas with industry friends in the past, people have said, “But if AOL accepts a Yahoo credential, then it's at Yahoo's mercy.”  This is plain wrong!  If I use a Yahoo credential to get an account on AOL – and Yahoo one day starts barring users from AOL (!), just ride the resulting publicity to get Yahoo's (ex?) users to go to AOL and regain access using their email address – just as they would with a lost password!   In fact the right of AOL to send the user an email in this unlikely case could be written into their privacy policy.<\/p>\n

Summary: what counts is the ACCOUNT, not the CREDENTIAL. <\/strong>Credentials should be seen as a cost center, and accounts as a profit center.<\/p>\n

The world is standing on its head, my friends.   Some Facebook is going to figure this out and gobble up eyeballs from every nook and cranny of the internet.  That's the one I would invest in if I were a betting man. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What matters is the account, not the credential…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,17,10,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}